The National Assembly's Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, and Food Committee held a full meeting for the first time to propose and discuss a 20 trillion won agricultural budget. The agricultural sector believes that the budget should be supplemented in the preliminary review of the Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, and Food Committee, including support for agricultural production costs. Both ruling and opposition parties agreed that the agricultural budget should be expanded to the level of the overall national budget increase rate for next year (8.1%, with an agricultural budget of 6.9%). However, there was debate over the appropriateness of the rural basic income.
◆Debate over rural basic income intensifies=Recently, the People Power Party has announced through a document titled "Problems and Review Directions of the Jae-myung Government's 2026 Budget Proposal" that it will scrutinize the 170 billion won rural basic income budget, calling it ill-conceived. During the full meeting, the offensive from lawmakers demanding improvements to the system intensified.
People Power Party Representative Jo Gyeong-tae (Busan Saha-eul) pointed out, "Giving 150,000 won per person equally to everyone, whether they are well-off or not, is a typical form of populism." Representative Seo Cheon-ho of the same party (Gyeongnam Sacheon-Namhae-Hadong) said, "Many of the seven pilot regions are diverting other budgets to fund the rural basic income, which is a policy that prevents anything other than basic income from being done, contrary to the intention of revitalizing declining regions." Representative Jo Seung-hwan (Busan Jung-gu/Yeongdo) suggested, "At least exclude public welfare recipients from the target group."
On the other hand, the ruling party evaluated that the rural basic income could be an alternative to the ineffective white medicine for declining local regions and called for the expansion of the program. Representative Ju Cheol-hyeon of the Democratic Party (Jeonnam Yeosu-gap) said, "The number of pilot project regions should be expanded to allow for the discovery of various policy models according to local conditions, and the national subsidy rate of 40% should be increased to around 50%."
◆Unified voice on budget support for national responsibility agriculture policy=Excluding the local battle over the rural basic income, the ruling and opposition parties formed a consensus that the overall agricultural budget needs to be strengthened. In particular, there was agreement that the national responsibility for stabilizing farmers' income and management and ensuring food security should be reinforced through the budget.
Representative Seo said, "Budgets directly related to farmers' income have been drastically reduced," mentioning price subsidies for inorganic fertilizers and supply and demand stabilization projects.